The Certainty of Uncertainty
Dialogues Introducing Constructivism
Berhard Poerksen
Imprint Academic 2004Varela: One of the most important scientific discoveries of the 20th century is that locally interacting components, if subjected to certain required rules, can produce a globally emerging pattern - a new dimension of identity, another level of being - that optimally satisfies a certain function. This transition from locally effective rules to globally emerging patterns enables us to explain numerous different phenomena that would otherwise remain totally mysterious and impenetrable. All of a sudden, we have - within the framework of the theory of complexity and with the concept of the dynamic system - a universal key to unlock the brain, a tornado, an insect colony, an animal population, and ultimately the experience of the self. Why is the idea of an emergent pattern so interesting? Consider, for example, a colony of ants. It is perfectly clear that the local rules manifest themselves in the interaction of innumerable individual ants. At the same time, it is equally clear that the whole anthill, on a global level, has an identity of its own: it needs space, it occupies space, it may disturb or obstruct the activities of human beings. We can now ask ourselves where this insect colony is located. Where is it? If you stick your hand into the anthill, you will only be able to grasp a number of ants, i.e. the incorporation of local rules. Furthermore, you will realise that a central control unit cannot be localised anywhere because it does not have an independent identity but a relational one. The ants exist as such but their mutual relations produce an emergent identity that is quite real and amenable to direct experience. This mode of existence was unknown before: on the one hand, we perceive a compact identity, on the other, we recognise tbat it has no determinable substance, no localisable essential core.

Mark Buchanan
UbiquityThe Science of History Why the World is Simpler than we Think
Weidenfels&Nicolson 2000pg 9Keywords: the organisation of networks (system) - a small shock to trigger a response out of all proportion to itself. It is as if these systems had been poised on some knife‑edge of instability, merely waiting to be set off - instability  disaster  upheaval  The global ecosystem is occasionally visited by abrupt episodes of collapse - a profound similarity not between moving objects, but between the upheavals that affect our lives, and the ways in which the complicated networks in which they occur - economies, political systems, ecosystems and so on - are naturally organised - these events, and the workings of the systems in which they occur, may reflect the tenor of just a few simple and ubiquitous underlying processes.

Sand-pile game - Per Bak, Chao Tang, Kurt Weisenfeld - what is the typical size of an avalanche? How big, that is, should you expect the very next avalanche to be? The result? Well …there was no result, for there simply was no 'typical' avalanche - The hypersensitive state to which the computer sand pile organises itself is known as the critical state -

critical state - Could the special organisation of the critical state explain why the world at large seems so susceptible to unpredictable upheavals? - the peculiar and exceptionally unstable organisation of the critical state does indeed seem to be ubiquitous in our world  At the heart of our story, then, lies the discovery that networks of things of all kinds ‑ atoms, molecules, species, people, and even ideas ‑ have a marked tendency to organise themselves along similar lines. On the basis of this insight, scientists are finally beginning to fathom what lies behind tumultuous events of all sorts, and to see patterns at work where they have never seen them before.

Catastrophe theory - catastrophe theory, despite its provocative name, has very little to say about the workings of anything like the earth's crust, an economy, or an ecosystem. In these things, where thousands or millions of elements interact, what is important is the overall collective organisation and behaviour. To understand things of this sort, one needs a theory that applies generally to networks of interacting things.

Chaos theory - chaos by itself cannot explain why a butterfly can cause a thunderstorm. Chaos may indeed explain why a tiny cause can quickly make the future different in its details (the positions of many molecules) from what it might have been. But to explain why tiny causes can ultimately lead to great upheavals, we need something else. We may say that although chaos can explain simple unpredictability, it cannot explain upheavability.

complexity: networks of interacting things: For centuries, physicists have sought the fundamental laws of the universe in timeless and unchanging equations  equilibrium - the air in the atmosphere is very much out of equilibrium, since it is continually being stirred and agitated and energised by the influx of light from the sun, and here we have a clue to the origin of upheavals: it lies in the distinction between what happens in equilibrium, and what happens away from it. If things in equilibrium are fairly simple, things out of equilibrium can be decidedly complex

non­-equilibrium physics, or, to use the currently fashionable language, the physics of complex systems - the relationship between the critical state and complexity is really quite simple: the ubiquity of the critical state may well be considered the first really solid discovery of complexity theory 

history: In coming to consider complex systems, physicists seem to have gained a new appreciation of a simple fact: in the immediate world around us, history is important - out of equilibrium, history does matter. One can only make sense of the infinitely detailed shape of a snowflake by following the history of its growth by slow freezing from the thin air. These are all problems in non‑equilibrium physics, the physics of complex systems, or, to coin a new term, historical physics. If the laws of physics are ultimately simple, why is the world so complex? Why don't ecosystems and economies reveal the same simplicity as Newton's laws? The answer, in a word, is history.

dynamics of history - For things out of equilibrium, one cannot proceed by solving timeless equations, and so physicists have turned to another approach ‑ replacing equations with games -

explore the basics of crystal growth  frozen accidents - If the laws of physics did not allow frozen accidents, the world would be in equilibrium, and everything would be like the gas in a balloon, resting forever in the same uniform and unchanging condition. But the laws of physics do allow events to have consequences that can become locked in place, and so alter the playing field on which the future unfolds. The laws of physics allow history to exist. The discovery of the ubiquity of the critical state, then, is not only the first solid discovery of complexity theory, but also the first deep discovery concerning the typical character of things historic.

Grand65: adaptive behaviour can emerge from essentially the same kinds of regulatory mechanism already employed by autocatalytic networks. So this rudimentary form of intelligence can be seen as the next rung of the ladder of mechanisms for persistence - another level of being. Any phenomenon that can modify its own behaviour as a consequence of the environmental stresses imposed by other phenomena has a greater chance of persisting than one that just stands there and takes it on the chin, and this is what we mean by adaptation. This ability to react to events after they have happened can get an organism a long way, but not nearly as far as pre-adaptation can. In other words, reacting to an existing opportunity or problem is not as effective as predicting it and changing one's behaviour appropriately before the opportunity has time to go away or before the damage is inflicted. Intelligence is perhaps a term that should be reserved for systems that can predict the future.

Intelligence is perhaps a term that should be reserved for systems that can predict the future.